Tzohar Conference Deals with Modern Educational Challenges

Annual conference by the Tzohar organization focused on how parents should deal with the challenges of the Facebook generation.

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Elad Benari & Hezki Baruch, 30/07/12 05:15

Tzohar education conference

Hezki Ezra

Arutz Sheva visited a conference on education by the Tzohar rabbis’ organization, which was held last week.

The conference, which is held annually, focused this year on the subject of much educational debate, how Jewish parents can and should deal with the educational challenges of the Facebook generation.

According to Tzohar member Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, the conference is meant to help parents become better parents, and the reason for the conference is that “we think that the most important thing is our family, and in order to raise our children in a very complicated generation and environment, you have to learn. You must study how to be parents, you must discuss, you must get advice.

“I think that more than a 1,000 parents came here, and we see the leading of the conference as one of our great missions as rabbis,” he added.

Rabbi Cherlow said that a major challenge religious Zionist parents have today is how to raise their children as observant Jews who follow Jewish halakha while keeping an open mind and being involved in the greater world.

“Parents feel that they want their children to be more open and to live within the greater culture, but they are afraid that once their children are too open, they’ll lose their identity as religious and Orthodox children,” he said. “This is one of the core issues in this conference, and we’re learning very important things about how to raise children in this complicated world.”

He added, as educators and rabbis have been warning for several years: “Today our homes are sometimes the most dangerous places because of Facebook and because of the people that come into our homes [through internet] without any guides to stop them. When our houses are the most dangerous places from a spiritual point of view, this is a great challenge that we have to face.”